I’ll be honest; I love a good detective story. James Patterson is one of my favorite authors because I love the way I can get lost in his quick, easy to read (and sometimes ridiculous) stories. Until I got the opportunity to play Kona, I never realized I was missing this type of experience in the gaming world. Konaprovides a well-told detective story with just enough of the supernatural to inspire that feeling of uncertainty. For fans of anything from X-Filesto Sherlock Holmes will find something to enjoy from the very first title to come from Parabole.

Kona takes place in the blizzard-stricken Canadian countryside in the 1970’s. Your character is a detective that happens to fall across a murder scene. However, it quickly becomes clear that you have bitten off more than you can chew as your discover the secrets behind the small town’s inhabitants. Can you discover the secret behind the murder and the reason behind the small town’s many secrets? This interactive tale is one that will leave you guessing until the very end, and the different threads of the story come to an exciting end.

When working on the concept for Kona, the team at Parabole were inspired by their very own backyard of Quebec. After realizing that there were not many games out there that actually took place in Quebec, the team at Parabole took full advantage of this fact.

As a Quebec studio, we also noticed how big the industry is here, but almost no game actually take place in our beautiful lands. We contacted a writer friend of ours and with his help, we were able to build a story that would take place in our province with some cultural references and all.

We chose to set the game in 1970 because it was a really important time period in our history and we wanted to tell a little bit about it. However, we also wanted to add some supernatural elements to the experience, so we did some research about myths and legends. This is when we found out about the Wendigo legend from the Cree people, one of the largest First Nation community in Canada. Three years later, here we are with a full game that has a great story to enjoy!

The road to making Kona was a long and tedious one, but one that also ultimately delivered. The team at Parabole, which currently consists of 6 people, scrapped two other projects before eventually deciding on making Kona a reality. Work on Parabole’s first independent project began long before their Kickstart in 2014. However, after 1,300 backers supported their Kickstarter, Parabole was able to receive all of the funded they needed to make their project a reality. To allow for even more time to perfect their creation, Kona had an early access release on Steam. It earned an official release at the beginning of March earlier this year on PC and consoles to positive reviews. When asked what the best part of this process was, the developer responded, “The most rewarding part of the process is obviously the positive feedback we receive every day since we first released Kona in Early Access last year. We worked so hard on the game that all this love makes the many challenges we face a lot less, well, challenging!”

For those of you who enjoyed Kona as much as I did, don’t worry! Parabole is currently working on 3 more titles. Each of these working titles will take place in the same universe as their first title. However, each of these games will focus on new characters, designs, stories, and game mechanics. Although they would not speak much on the working title, the development team said that one of these games is very early in production. I can only imagine what the team at Parabole has in store for its next, few titles, but I can’t wait to see it!

Kona is an experience that I would suggest to anyone who loves indie games, detective stories, you have an itch for the paranormal, or all of the above. The game offers a charming narrator that eases some of the otherwise pretty tense moments which gives the game a really nice flow. It offers a really well-written detective story that will leave you clueless until the very end, and, in this day and age, it is hard to keep an ending from being somewhat obvious. Kona is available now on Steam and PS4; so, go and pick it up today!

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Shelby loves all things horror and nerd-related and has been playing games for as long as she can remember. Her first memory of gaming comes from playing Super Mario World on the SNES with her aunt. She has a real passion for literature and the indie gaming community.